Carlos is doing wonderful. He's been up sitting in a chair, getting stronger fast, eating, etc. And PT hasn't even come!
They pulled the chest tubes finally about fifteen minutes ago. He feels better with those out. They stopped the dobutamine this morning. His oxygen is off and his oxygen saturation awake is about 93-95%. He may still have to wear it at night. LVAD training starts Friday morning. Carlos wants to go home in a week but I think he's being a little unrealistic. The lvad nurse says the average stay is 2 weeks once graduated to the fourth floor. We are shooting for by the girls' last volleyball games on the 25th. We shall see.
He still has the pleural effusion and his left lung sounds are diminished so there is some risk for pneumonia. He has previously grew out staph in his sputum cultures but they are giving him vancomycin (antibiotic) still. We had a discussion about using the incentive spirometer every hour while awake and the increasing mobility will also help.
Today's agenda includes the respiratory work, moving to the 4th floor, double sessions of PT/OT and hopefully the bladder catheter out today. The arterial line will come out today also. He'll still have the PICC line with the primacor and a peripheral IV. And he will remain on telemetry of course. But his strides in the last couple days have been awesome. I'm so proud of him.
I will post a room number on the fourth floor when we get that. There are no restricted visiting hours so people can come and go whenever.
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